Undying Gensokyo 2 Eternal Paradise
by WillieG.R
Summary: Aya and Satori, along with two more survivors, are force to tread through an undying world once more, to try and save their homes from a catastrophic fate. Will they survive a second infection? Will they succumb to grief, stress and loneliness and lose their minds? Only time, and the speed of their success can tell...


Gensokyo: A hidden paradise for forgotten magical beings to live their lives in chaotic peace, hidden and forgotten from the modern world outside their barrier, a world that has forgotten about magic and wonder.

Three and a half years ago a selfish human tricked several allies into attempting an experiment that, unknown to said allies, would make that human immortal. They were under the pretext of making rains that would turn their homes into a heavenly paradise.

The experiment was a complete success; in fact it was too great a success with a terrible cost, for said experiment did succeed in making that human immortal, however the human could never foresee that that very same concoction that turned her immortal would spread all over her home and turn everyone immortal, like her, and like her they all took appearances of zombie-like monsters; another unforeseen effect.

Silly fairies became deathly monsters; weak humans, whom are already capable of great destruction, became abominations of death and chaos; their very own homes became undesirable monstrosities that would kill anyone as soon as they tried to relax.

And so, shortly after the exceptional success of the experiment, and all of Gensokyo was slowly turning into a zombie infested world, the inhabitants of the land soon learned of the pain of immortality.

They also lost their minds and all they wanted to do was to devour anything that was alive, and things got even worst when the concoction, which was housed inside a large cauldron, corrupted the minds of those near it with promises of power, and so a _Master_ was born, and amidst the chaos that Master lost the power of the cauldron to another, and thus a new, second Master was born, corrupted by the promise of power of a then-sentient experiment.

Everything seemed lost and Gensokyo was to become a paradise of death and destruction; but wherever there is darkness attempting to rid the world of hope, there will always be light to bring balance back.

Two very unlikely heroines: Aya Shameimaru and Satori Komeiji, joined forces and walked that alien land that mocked their home to restore it to its former beauty.

Aya and Satori fought through atrocities worthy of being residents of hell itself, and almost lost themselves and their lives in their unfair quest to solve the horrifying incident; and in the end, though uncertain of it, the girls achieved a pained victory.

Although their home was back, it was greatly changed; it took a very long time for the flora to restore itself, even when fairies used their powers to speed the healing up, and many human lives were lost as well, due to starvation and sickness, shortly after they were restored.

The heroines themselves were left with a trauma too great, and even when surrounded by those dear to them, all they could see were monsters and death.

It took them a very long time to forgive the selfish human and allow **her** the antidote that had turned everyone else back to normal, and it took even longer still for them to pick up the new threads of life that were rewarded to them after all their hard work.

Three and a half years have passed and it has become clear that this renewed Gensokyo has truly become their home again, and yet the four girls: the selfish human who learned humility, the wicked Master who learned kindness and gentleness, and the two tired heroines who discovered love and hope amidst death and darkness; still feel something was left lurking in wait, hiding in the shadows of their doubts.

* * *

It is a hot summer's midday, and at the entrance to the Kappa Village, which lies hidden behind the Youkai Mountain's relocated waterfall and thick and colorful foliage, a group of kappa meet with two blonde visitors.

Alice Margatroid, who has short hair, blue eyes, and wears a white capelet over a blue dress adorned with pink ribbons she uses as a belt and headband, stands tall with a stern look on her face while crossing her arms over her chest.

Marisa Kirisame, who wears a tall black witch's hat over her wavy, long blonde hair she ties into a braid to the left of her face, has yellow eyes, and wears a black vest and skirt over a white shirt, and adorns herself with a brown apron, slightly tilts her head down and appears to be staring at a basket full of cucumbers she holds with both hands.

Nitori Kawashiro has blue hair she ties into twintails with red bobbles, has blue eyes, wears a light-blue vest and skirt with many pockets on them, has a green hat with a blue wisp on it, and a green backpack that has its straps tied to a golden key in front of her chest.

Behind her, the many other kappa wear almost the same outfit as her, although there is one particular kappa with short black hair who wears a camouflage outfit, distinguishing herself well from the others.

Alice sighs and rubs the bridge of her nose as she looks down with contempt at Marisa and says "yes, she _has_ changed for the better. She's far more mature and much more trustworthy than before, **but** because of her past actions, I do believe these conditions you spoke of are spot-on and justified."

The black and white witch removes her hat as she kneels on the ground, prostrates herself in front of all the kappa present, and then says "Nitori, please, I beg of you, please you have to help me! Just tell me your conditions and I will follow them to the letter, just please, help me help _them_! You have no idea what these hallucinations are doing to them."

The kappa girl looks down with hatred at the human blonde, and for a moment it seems like she will throw a vicious kick between the girl's eyes, but she holds herself back and says "very well. I will tell you the conditions in which you will be allowed to enter the village. After you accept them, I will decide if I'll help you or not."

She opens up a rolled-up piece of paper and reads "number one: _you will have to **earn** our trust again._ Number two: _anything you say here will be treated as a **lie**._ Number three: _you may only visit **me** with prior notification._ Number four: _you will not be given any finished inventions until proven worthy._ Number five: _you will be attacked with **lethal force** if you are ever caught in the village without **me**, Nitori Kawashiro, by your side._ And number six: you will give _an offering of cucumbers to any kappa you may approach at any given time._

Nitori glares down at the begging witch and asks "are we clear on this, Kirisame?"

Marisa quickly offers the basket of cucumbers while keeping her head as low as possible, and answers "yes, crystal clear! I swear to you, I will not violate these conditions."

The kappa behind Nitori quickly partake on the offered cucumbers with glee while the mentioned kappa glares down with disgust at her ex-friend and thinks of taking her word back; but she won't. She sighs, nods, takes the last cucumber and says "alright then. Now get the hell up; you're creeping me out!"

As soon as she witch scrambles to her feet with some help from Alice, the blue-haired kappa signals them to follow her, and then walks into the cave behind them and her kappa kin. The two blonde magicians quickly follow.

The moment the magicians step inside they are both left in awe when their eyes meet the fully restored and updated kappa village, which now looks like a human city from the outside world, only brighter, cleaner, and wetter.

The old structures have been replaced by stronger houses built out of metal and reinforced glass, and all the houses have a glistening white cover on their walls, while the roofs vary in shapes, colors and sizes.

Thanks to the way the Youkai Mountain is set now, the kappa have made pipelines that carry water from the top of the mountain to their homes, and although it appears that some of those pipes are wasting water by spilling the precious fluid from the ceiling down to the ground and into puddles, the system made by them allows for that water to flow outward and link with the waterfall outside.

As Nitori opens the door to her house; which stands out for being the largest, and the only house with a grey roof; she gruffly says "stop gawking and get inside!"

The magicians do as so roughly requested, and as soon as they are inside, their host shuts the door down, steps over to a panel with numbers and symbols that's set next to the door, and after pressing some combination of buttons the girl turns around, presses her back against the door, then sighs as though with relief.

The blondes admire as black panels rise from the ground and set themselves on the bright walls, making the house look darker but cozier.

Nitori's work bench is, as always, to the left of the house close to the kitchen table and further back is the kitchen, and to the right is the living room with soft-looking blue couches and seats surrounding a small oval table in the middle.

There is a corridor between those two areas that obviously leads to the bedrooms and bathroom, but because of the black walls, it all looks too dark to safely venture in there.

As soon as all the black walls are in place, the little kappa sighs then says "you lucky bitch! You don't know how HARD it was to get you back into the village as freely. I had to suggest those stupid conditions or they would have never allowed this!" She waits for a second before adding "we're safe here now. These are sound-proof walls. The others won't hear us."

Marisa knows that sudden outburst was directed to her, but before she can ask, the kappa continues "those devices you requested have been prepared and delivered with those specific instructions you gave Alice, and they have all been signed in your name. The recipients were actually glad to receive them. I was quite surprised."

Once again the witch tries to express her confusion, but again Nitori beats her to it with a weak smile on her face. "Yes, I know, it's confusing, but it is how it is. Alice has been keeping her eyes on you at my request, and I know how much you have changed, but..." She shudders and snarls for a moment, then composes herself and continues "it still hurts. To this day, your betrayal still hurts. I want to forgive and forget, but it was all too much."

Marisa walks over to the kappa, risks her safety by giving her a light embrace, and to her relief and surprise, the girl merely returns the embrace. "No matter how many times I apologize it will never be enough, Nitori. I am... infinitely grateful to you, my friend, for trusting me this much again." She looks to Alice and smiles sweetly, then says "you too Alice."

The puppeteer blushes a bit and looks away while stammering soft words, but then composes herself, and in her now-usual unfriendly tone she says "just get on with it. Why did you drag me all this way to the Kappa Village with you?"

Marisa pushes herself away from Nitori, takes off her hat, then pulls a silver and blue triangular device with a glowing red button on the center, and says "first and foremost, I did it so I could personally thank Nitori for this. It may seem simple and a bit silly, but this will help greatly, I can feel it."

The kappa girl blushes and rubs the back of her head as she bashfully chuckles, then says "aww, it was nothing. But... I understand there is something else?"

The witch nods with urgency in her eyes, takes a wine-colored book out of her hat, and says "the hallucinations and the voice are back. Not only that; but the urge to cause harm to others has become stronger. The four of us have been able to keep it to ourselves so far, but I'm afraid it's starting to become unbearable; and I was hoping that, perhaps with your help and Aya's old pictures, I can figure out a way to stop these for good."

Nitori accepts the book she realizes has been written by Marisa herself, and flips through the pages, stopping occasionally on a few pages of interest.

She closes the book, looks at the witch with concern, and then asks "why do you keep all that stuff in your hat? Don't you have a pocket, a purse, or something?"

The blonde witch shrugs, making the kappa girl sigh with concern, then said girl makes her way to her work-desk and starts muttering to herself about 'where she put it' while looking around small drawers and between clusters of machine parts.

As she rummages around she comes across that grey rectangular machine with the antennas that kept her sentient during that horrifying nightmare of an incident where everyone was turned into zombies.

As if doing it on automatic, she grabs the machine, sets it and the needle that goes into her ear on top of her desk, and then she finds the metally-brown storage cubes she was looking for and smiles, then takes two.

She returns to Marisa and Alice with those cubes and says "you see these? These little cubes can hold innumerable amount of things in them and you can keep them in your pocket, and they never even get heavy."

Alice points at one of them and says "Aya and Satori had those. They are still using them to this day."

Nitori shrugs and says "yeah, I let them keep 'em. They deserve them. However..."

The puppeteer knows where her host is going to and waves her hand as she nervously says "no-no, not for me thanks. I feel like I'm going to get sucked into one if I get too close."

The kappa turns her attention to Marisa and says "I know what you're going to say. I _gave_ the ones Satori and Aya have for free, but even if we are on friendly terms again I cannot just give them up to you so easily."

"No problem" begins the witch while rummaging through her hat for her wallet. "How much do you want, ze?"

The kappa girl looks a bit surprised at the fact that Marisa Kirisame, the thieving witch she once knew, is willingly offering to pay for something instead of trying to swindle her for a free deal.

She shakes the confusion out of her head, and feeling a bit guilty she says "10,000... each."

The now-humble witch smiles and says "well, it's a good thing I was able to save then, da-ze." then pulls a large black wallet out of her hat with the paper money neatly placed inside. "I'll take both."

As she pulls out and offers the 20,000, the kappa girl's eyes glisten a bit as her guilt rises, then asks "um, wh-why take both? What are you-?"

The witch's smile becomes tainted with a hint of sadness, and says "I just have this feeling that I may need the second one; perhaps for myself, or maybe for someone else? I-I know it's confusing, but it's just something I feel in my heart right now; something I need to do."

The kappa girl stares at the blonde with a bit of concern, sighs while smiling weakly, then says "then give me 15,000 and let's call it a day."

* * *

The Hakurei Shrine; an establishment set atop a tall mountain at the east of Gensokyo's borders that serves as the lookout point for a certain shrine maiden, as well as being the protection of said border; _and_ a gathering place for youkai.

The shrine contains a small extension of the Moriya Shrine at the left of its entrance after the large red gate (from the point of view inside the shrine grounds), as well as having a small hot spring further left; to the right, a recently built gazebo nearing the back of the prayer and living buildings, and further back there are the storage house and the lake.

As always, ever since the "Zombies" incident was resolved, Aya and Satori rest at the gazebo while facing the trees and shrubs that surround the shrine, and are just about to fall asleep on each others' shoulders as the peaceful tranquility gets to them.

Aya Shameimaru has red eyes and short black hair she adorns with a red tokin with 4 white fluffs on two hanging strings, and wears a white shirt with a yellow band that's adorned with falling brown maple leaves, a black skirt with the same band as her shirt; although the skirt has it on the other side; and a pair of red geta sandals with a single platform.

Satori Komeiji has purple eyes and short purple hair she adorns with a black headband, and wears a long-sleeved light-blue shirt, a pink skirt, red slippers, and has a red third eye that is connected to her via various arteries, floating in front of her heart. That eye is currently covered by a metal-grey armor that has a glass cover in front and a led light that's currently glowing blue.

As they begin to fall asleep, Reimu Hakurei, who has black hair she ties with a large red ribbon and with red tubes to the side, and wears a red vest and skirt with detached white sleeves and under-shirt, gets behind the girls and startles them by saying "well hello my dear friends. My, what a lovely day this is."

The startled tengu girl holds her chest as she tries to get herself away from the shrine maiden while saying "Re-Reimu please don't do that! You almost gave me a heart attack!"

The satori maiden's face looks horribly pale as she looks toward the human while trying to kick herself away and says "that is not funny. That was very frightening!"

The human girl smiles and chuckles, but her joy is very short lived when she notices the look of terror on the youkai girls' faces. She bows with a sigh then says "I'm sorry. I just meant to give you a little startle."

Her face fills with confusion and concern and she asks "hey, wait a minute; you guys aren't reverting, right?" That's when she notices the armor on Satori's third eye and the flash upgrades on Aya's camera and asks "wait, what are you guys doing with those?"

The girls merely rush closer to each other; as per usual; and appear hesitant to give an answer, so Reimu just sighs, crosses her arms under her chest, and says "alright, I won't push it. On another note; girls, I don't mind you coming to the shrine every day and all that, but could you _please_ tell those others to go elsewhere? They keep eating all my food and drinking all my tea!"

She points with her thumb toward the shrine's living room where Orin, a cat girl with black cat ears, two tails, braided fiery-red hair and dark red eyes who wears a dark green dress; Okuu, a hell raven with dark brown hair and dark red eyes, a pair of wings on her back and who is wearing a white shirt and green skirt; and Koishi, a girl with a wavy grey-green hair who wears a black hat, a long-sleeved yellow shirt and a green skirt, and has a blue third eye floating in front of her chest; cheer as they mingle and eat away at Reimu's food.

Accompanying them are Hatate, a crow tengu girl with brown eyes, long brown hair in pigtails who wears a white shirt with a black tie and a checkered purple and black skirt; and Momiji, a white wolf tengu girl with red eyes, short silver hair, white wolf ears and a white tail who wears a long-sleeved white shirt and a long black skirt.

Aya and Satori chuckle nervously at the sight before them, then the tengu girl says "um, w-well, the thing is..." Her voice trails off, so Satori continues "we have already asked them to take it easy on the food here. And have they not brought you offerings of food and tea leaves already?"

Reimu chuckles in a manner that makes her annoyance clear, and then says "well they _have_ brought really nice things, but then **_I _**am left to cook everything late at night with a growling stomach because they have already eaten **_everything_** else!"

That little burst from the shrine maiden makes the two girls in the gazebo gasp and huddle up with fright, surprising the shrine maiden and raising her suspicions.

"Alright, spill it. What is it with you two? These past three days you have been as jumpy as when you resolved that incident. What's going on?"

The girls look at each other with doubt, turn their sights to Reimu, then hesitantly, the tengu says "Reimu; the hallucinations and that voice are back, as well as that urge to... harm others."

The satori youkai nods and adds "we feel something is happening, or that something will happen soon." She starts to tear up and twitch as though just about ready to cry and continues "we don't want to believe it's true, but the anxiety in our hearts is too strong."

Aya takes her digital camera out of her pocket to stare at it on her hands while saying "nobody seems to believe us and keep telling us it's just stress, but regardless, I convinced Nitori to activate that storage thing so I don't run out of space in this baby. Turns out it locks up when it's full."

Reimu holds her hands under her sleeves as she gives the girls a look of pity, and then says "I... don't know what to say about that. Everything seems so peaceful it's a little hard to believe that there might be something coming."

She enters the gazebo and sits to Aya's left and says "however, it appears to me that you are not just saying this for no reason. I will keep my eyes peeled; but girls, please, don't let that feeling ruin what you worked so hard to achieve."

The girls look at the shrine maiden with pained eyes, but nod as they feel her kindness reach them, and feel warmer and more relaxed.

* * *

The Scarlet Devil Mansion; an architecture that, as the name implies, is painted in several shades of red; it has a few windows on its surroundings, and has its own clock tower in its center; a magnificent establishment for vampires to inhabit.

It is set on an island in the middle of the Misty Lake near the foot of the Youkai Mountain, and as seemingly isolated as it is, it still needs its tall walls surrounding it, and a gate guard to keep intruders away.

Inside the mansion; which is larger than outside; fairy maids work hard to keep the place clean, although they are quite terrible at their job; but regardless of that, their hard work keeps being appreciated the most by none other than Flandre Scarlet herself, who smiles as she greets her servants while on her way to the kitchen.

Flandre has long blonde hair she ties into a ponytail to her left side, has red vampire eyes, and wears a white mop hat with a red bow, a red vest and skirt over a thin pink undergarment, and on her back she has a pair of black rods with colorful crystals hanging from them; like makeshift wings.

As she greets the fairies with what everyone at the mansion now know as her usual happy smile, said maids whisper amongst themselves.

"Miss Flandre is so sweet! She makes me want to work twice as hard."

"I know, right! She's the best! She actually helped me and the others clean the clock tower's face last night!"

"She's the best _second-in-charge_ mistress ever!"

A black-haired fairy in a yellow maid's dress approaches Flandre and hugs her chest while saying "good morning Lady Flandre. How are you feeling today? Can we help you with anything?"

The blonde vampire giggles as she pats the fairy on the head, and then says "I'm feeling fine." She places a finger on her lower lip while in thought, and adds "although I'm feeling a bit bored. Um, is Remilia awake yet?"

Three more fairies now surround the vampire, and all, including the one hugging the little mistress, shake their heads with cute little frowns on their faces.

Flandre rubs them all on the head and giggles, though her face soon turns bored after she's done, and so she turns around and continues on her way to the kitchen while saying "I guess it's too early for her to be awake. Oh well, might as well eat some breakfast since I'm already up and all."

The four fairies go after her, all speaking at the same time, telling her they will make her breakfast immediately. The vampire merely laughs and says "fine, fine, you can all work together, but no water on the eggs this time."

After her breakfast is done, and while the fairies clean the plates, pots, pans and cutlery used for the meal, Flandre remains seated on the long table at the dining room, seemingly bored and at the same time lost in thought.

She stares toward the red curtains covering one of the few groups of large windows in the whole mansion and seems to look straight at the one curtain that moves with a breeze that's sneaking its way inside.

She feels as though the playful curtain is cute at first, but her thoughts turn around and she thinks it's now mocking her, and a thick and heavy sensation begins to smear all the happiness she felt in her heart.

She starts to tap her fingers impatiently on the table, rests her right elbow on it, supports her chin with that hand as she continues to stare, not caring that her nails are starting to scratch the mirror-polished table as though in rage.

Her eyes glow red, her upper lips twitch as a soft snarl escapes her, and then she hears a familiar voice, yelps, jumps off her chair, and then drops on the floor on her knees.

Sakuya Izayoi, the human chief maid with blue eyes, silver hair with braids on both sides of her face, who wears a dark-blue and white maid's outfit with a knee-long skirt, and who has knives strapped to a band on her left thigh, looks down at the little mistress with concern and asks "Young Mistress are you alright? Did you not hear my announcement just now?"

Flandre looks around the red-carpeted floor as though looking at it for the first time, and before she can calm herself down the fairy maids scramble out of the kitchen, screaming with fright when they see the vampire on the floor, and quickly help her back on her feet while dusting her knees, skirt and hands.

The blonde sighs and pats each of the four fairies on the head after she's back up, looks at Sakuya and says "boy, I didn't even feel you getting close!"

The fairies threaten to attack the chief maid, but Flandre stands them down with soft gestures, and so the human sighs and asks "what is the matter Young Mistress? What has got you so distracted?"

The young looking vampire moans and slumps in an unladylike manner and says "I'm just so bored. I guess I must have started daydreaming or something."

The seemingly unfriendly human cracks a small smile as she lets a light sigh escape her, then says "young lady, don't let Mistress Remilia see you slumping like that. You know how she gets."

Flandre waves her hand dismissively while saying "aww boo, she's always going to complain about something so there really is... no..." She suddenly feels as though the whole world pulsates heavily and starts stumbling left and right.

She holds her face and shakes her head in an attempt to recompose herself, and then she suddenly gasps, turns colder than normal and paler than usual, looks at Sakuya and the fairies, then drops on the floor like dead weight.

She can hear all the maids calling out to her and scrambling while screaming with fright just before completely losing her consciousness.

She can feel herself toss and turns as her body is stricken with anxiety, she hears herself moan but is unable to wake up, and then, after what feels like days, she wakes up.

Flandre breathes fast through her mouth as she scans the area she is in and tries to remember where she is. She finds herself on an ample bed with soft pink sheets and a thick blood-red sheet over the rest, to her left she sees a dark closet with dark-brown doors, and to her right is an old dinner table with a hand mirror and light makeup sets on top of it.

She sees the silver haired maid after scanning her room and feels calm about her, even though she can't seem to recognize her, and then she looks right and smiles when she notices someone very familiar. "Onee-chan."

She immediately recognizes the wavy light-blue haired girl with black bat wings seated to her right. Remilia Scarlet wears her usual pink dress and pink mop hat adorned with a ribbon as she softly looks down at her sister with those red vampire eyes.

The elder Scarlet gently rubs the head of her blonde sister and asks "how are you feeling Flan?"

The young Scarlet blinks twice, glances around the room, sits on her bed; Sakuya and Remilia carefully supporting her by the arms; and after looking around she says "um, a bit lost. H-how long was I out?"

Her older sister places a hand on her forehead to see if there are any temperature changes as she says "just two hours. It's nearly nightfall."

The blonde girl suddenly gasps as her heart starts racing, and with great anxiety in her voice she exclaims "Remi, please listen to me! Something bad is happening! We need to go see Reimu _now_!"

She tries to get out of her bed, but her own dizziness and Remilia's hand on her chest prevent her from going too far.

Once she's lying back on her bed the elder Scarlet stares at her with intensely glowing red eyes and strictly says "you are not going anywhere young lady! You have just awoken from fainting for no reason, and if you think for one moment that I'll let you run off into the night like this, you are sorely mistaken!"

"But sis, this is important!" insists Flandre while trying to push herself up. "Something is happening right now and we have to warn her!"

Remilia sighs and watches as her sister succumbs to exhaustion quite quickly, then softly says "Flan, just look at yourself. You can barely fight back or get up."

Sakuya places a supportive hand on the young vampire's shoulder and adds "besides, it's nearing night time, and humans usually sleep at the nightly hours, so Reimu would probably just kick us out the moment she sees us, so why not wait until the morning?"

Flandre tries thrashing around to try and escape but can't, and her anger boils up to her head. "Damn it all Remilia, quit being so fucking stubborn and listen to me! We have to-"

She yelps as her sister's clawed hand smacks her face, and she immediately settles down as she gazes up in shock with tears welling up under her eyes.

Remilia sighs as she recomposes herself, then looks down at her younger sister with furrowed brows and says "that is my _final word_ Flandre Scarlet! We'll go in the morning and tell Reimu whatever the hell it is you want to tell her. For now, I **_order_** you to rest!"

Before the blonde can speak up again, the blue-haired girl barks back and quiets her down, then she and Sakuya slowly make their way out of the room, leaving the young sister sobbing softly as the stinging sensation on her cheek throbs.

Just before Remilia closes the door, the young vampire sobs, and then softly cries "when will you start listening to me?"

The elder Scarlet stops and glances back, and watches as her little sister succumbs to exhaustion, and then closes the door as silently as possible.

* * *

Meanwhile, at the Hakurei Shrine, Reimu has kicked everyone outside of her home under the pretext of needing to clean before going to bed; a pretext made real after she notices everyone is still in the grounds, ruining her lazy time for appearances.

Satori and Aya stand facing each other while surrounded by their friends in front of the donation box. It's starting to look a little dark and yet the girls still won't leave.

"Come on Aya, like, we need to hurry or we'll have to go through the checkpoints." insists Hatate while placing her hand on the mentioned girl's forearm.

At the same time Koishi jumps on her sister's back and says "Satori-onee-chan, I'm sleepy~! Let's go home please~!"

The girls in the spotlight look back at their loved ones, back at each other, then again to their loved ones, and then Satori says "um, is it alright if you go ahead without me?"

Aya chuckles nervously and says "y-yeah, go ahead without me either. I want to stay here with Satori-chan a little longer."

"Oh no," begins the scowling Momiji. "You two had your _good fun_ last week, and if you didn't know it Shameimaru, I got in trouble for covering your ass last time, so we are going home tonight." That outburst causes both girls to blush harder than ever.

"Please, you don't understand," insists Aya after recovering from the blunt revelation as she tries to get closer to Satori, who says "there's something odd going on, and we feel we need to stay together. Something may happen soon, we can feel it. Please understand!"

The mind reader is surprised when Orin holds her in a soft embrace and softly says "Satori-sama, you and Miss Aya are under a lot of stress recently, and that's unhealthy for both of you. Nothing is going to happen, so please let's go home."

The brown-haired tengu gives her counterpart a soft rub on the head and says "trust us; there is nothing to worry about anymore. And if something does happen, you and Satori are, like, the toughest of the tough! Everything will be just fine."

The loving girls look at each other with worry in their eyes, but after a sigh from both, they hesitantly give in to their loved ones requests, and soon after they are both quietly headed their separate ways home.

Later that night, at the Tengu Village, more specifically at Aya's yellow-roofed house, the tengu reporter has just finished her bath and is standing around in her room, but instead of wearing her pajamas she gets herself into her usual daily attire.

As she looks around her room she can feel anxiety slowly creeping into her body, attacking her legs first, then going up to her chest and spreading like a virus from there.

Her silk-sheeted bed in front of her at the center of the room disgusts her, even though the cool air from her air conditioner invites her body to sleep on it, the vanity to the left gives her chills, and her closet starts to look like a hideout of disgusting secrets.

She starts to breathe heavily through her mouth; she picks up her storage cube and looks inside of it, pockets it and picks up her digital camera immediately after, then places it in her other empty pocket, and finally she picks up her maple fan and stares at it as if studying it.

The room suddenly flashes and she finds herself stuck inside a bleak room with a broken bed in the center, a destroyed vanity littered all over the blood-stained floors, and her closet suddenly bursts, though there's nothing but darkness and broken clothes in there.

"What is-? H-help." meekly calls the girl as she anxiously looks all around and feels her entire body succumb to fear, then her door bursts open and she screams and fires countless wind blades toward it with just one nervous swing from her fan.

The room flashes back to normal and she sees Momiji screaming as she gets struck with the wind blades and fall on her rump against the corridor's wall outside.

"OH MY KANAKO!" exclaims Aya, and before long she's rushing to help her friend up. "Momiji I'm so sorry! Please forgive me, I didn't mean to!"

"_GET OFF OF ME!_" furiously demands the white wolf after pushing the crow girl away. She glares at her attacker, snorts angrily, then says "damn it to hell Shameimaru; you are _reverting_ and you didn't tell us!? Fucking thank you for the godsdamned warning, bitch!"

The black-haired reporter wants to apologize, but the wolf girl swings her arm warningly to keep her away, clenches her fists in front of her chest and slowly calms herself down as she rubs her face, then says "I... am sor- I am going home now. Tomorrow we will go see Tenma and see what's wrong with your head this time."

As she storms off, grumbling curses under her breath, Aya notices Hatate at the end of the corridor, but keeps her attention on Momiji as she slams the front door shut.

She wants nothing more than to go out there and yell her head off at the angry wolf, and maybe tell her how hard it is for her at the moment to keep calm, but she's too agitated and is still hyperventilating from the stress.

"Aya, we sh-." Before Hatate continues, the black haired tengu lifts her hand as her breathing settles, waves it softly, and then softly says "please... just go. I am... very dangerous to you right now."

The brown-haired tengu sighs, crosses her arms under her chest as she looks with helplessness at her ally, but then turns around and slowly makes her way outside, but not before saying "please, just, like, try to relax."

At the same time, at Chireiden, Satori's amazing palace with greyish marble walls and columns adorning the corridors, stained-glass windows adorning most of the seemingly darker corridors, white walls in the more intimate parts of the structure, and an amazingly beautiful garden at the back, where the hole to old hell is, Satori throws away the silky blankets of her bed off of her person, and sits at the edge of it as her anxiety rises.

Her ample air-conditioned room easily houses that beautiful large bed in the middle of the room, the cute vanity with a mirror in front of said bed, tables and ornaments around the bed and vanity, and the red-carpeted floors add a regal elegance to the already elegant room.

As she stares around her bedroom she feels as though she's looking at it for the very last time, and a feeling of sad longing soon mixes in with the anxiety in her heart.

She sighs loudly, jumps off of her bed, and then says to herself "fine then, if I can't sleep, I'll just go work out a bit!"

She walks further into the room to her walk-in closet; which is to the left of her bathroom; but as she gets closer the room in front of her flashes and becomes bleak and stained with dried blood on the walls, her mattress looks torn, her vanity has all its little drawers opened and scattered around, and she begins to whimper as she takes steps away from the closet doors.

"Ay-Aya-chan? Ugu! What's happening?" Her whimpering attracts the attention of something inside her closet, and as soon as the seemingly-broken doors open up, a bony grey arm with dried skin and clawed fingers reaches out toward her, and she screams as she starts shooting repeated flashes with her third eye.

The room turns back to normal and she hears the familiar flapping of wings and bumps on the ceiling that happen whenever Okuu tries to fly away while inside enclosed spaces.

When the flaps and bumps stop, Satori, though very shaken and still whimpering, approaches the closet and asks "O-O-Okuu? Okuu, are you in there?"

She hears the hell raven's sniffles, sobs and unintelligible whimpers, and rushes inside while loudly saying "Okuu, I'm so sorry!"

The hell raven lies on the floor of the closet with her knees facing each other, and rubbing her eyes while crying "Satori-sama scared me. Satori-sama yelled at me and made me cry. I'm a bad girl! Satori-sama is mad!"

The mind-reader quickly gives her pet a hug and a kiss on the cheek and shakingly cries "Okuu, I'm so sorry. You scared me and I didn't... I didn't mean to make you cry. Please, calm down!"

The bird girl sniffles three more times, returns the embrace with one arm, then Orin enters the closet, sighs loudly, and then asks "did the world change again?"

Satori stops, stands up, nods twice, then says "Orin, please be a dear and take Okuu with you." She takes a deep breath and says "please stay away from me for the time being; and more importantly..."

She turns to face the kasha with a very pained look on her face and says "please stay safe."

* * *

Meanwhile, at Marisa's house, which is hidden by trees and bushes in a clearing of the Magical Forest, the lights on the first floor reveal as a figure walks toward the kitchen on the bright room, and shortly after, the house's attic comes alive with a bright light of its own.

Marisa releases the string she just used to activate her light bulb and walks toward a little wooden desk she has to the right of her small single-person bed that's placed against the middle part of the farthest wall of her room.

The house, which once used to be a messy mountainous clutter of stolen treasure, is now a semi-neat little home with a few knickknacks and magical artifacts lying around the floor.

The witch looks at her house and at the plain wooden floors giving a strange dirty light brown glow as the light from the bulb bounces off of it, and her eyes become pained when the memories of the collected items she once possessed come back to haunt her.

"Marisa, do you want tofu with your rice?" Alice's call from the kitchen snaps the black and white from her longing, and after shaking her head and rubbing her eyes with her free hand, she calls back "Uhh, sure! That sounds just fine!"

She promptly makes her way to her desk, tosses her hat to the bed, and places her old-looking book with the wine colored cover and a yellow envelope that she held against her hip, on said desk before taking her seat.

She moves the book aside and quickly opens the envelope then pulls a stack of photos from within. All are photos from when Aya and Satori were fighting zombies out in the open; more specifically, pictures that have the clouds in the sky as plainly visible as possible.

The witch flips through the pictures and hums softly while carefully studying them, then places them back on the desk, opens a thin drawer on the underside of the desk, then takes a small but potent magnifying glass from within and begins exploring the pictures with it.

She smells the food on Alice's hand so she isn't surprised at all when said puppeteer says "you better eat before you start working on those. After all, humans can't think straight when they are hungry."

Marisa looks up at her friend with a sweet smile, then the short-haired blonde asks "and what do you hope to find in those, I wonder?"

The ordinary magician grabs the offered plate of rice, diced vegetables and fried tofu and says "thank you Alice; and yes, the hunger is getting to my head."

She glances over to the pictures and before taking her first bite she says "I think I'm close to figurin' out this whole deal with the hallucinations and the voice, and possibly the urge to cause harm. Something tells me that I'm going to find an answer here, ze."

The blonde puppeteer nods with a quick sigh, raises that machine with the red button, showing it now has the numbers '03' above said button, then says "well I hope you can find your answer soon. All three girls seem to be acting negatively tonight."

A sudden surge of urgency fills the witch; evident on the look in her eyes; and she starts eating away quickly so she can start working again on those pictures.

After she's done with her meal and has handed over her plate to Alice, Marisa returns to the pictures and starts studying one by one as thoroughly as possible using that magnifying glass of hers.

She spends and whole hour looking through 20 pictures, placing all her attention on the clouds, and she still can't find anything worth mentioning.

Marisa is tired, her eyes are becoming heavy, but she rubs off the sleep by pinching her own face with her left hand, moans as she rubs her eyes, and when she looks down at the pictures again she groans with frustration and leans back on the chair.

"Man, I really thought I would find the answer here, ze." she moans to herself. She picks herself up and stares down at the picture, and then she opens her eyes wide and gasps softly. "Wait a minute."

She grabs the magnifying glass and moves it away from the undead human in the picture to trace some odd curve in the clouds.

She switches to the next picture and scans it carefully, but finds nothing so she goes to the next, then the next, then one more, and there she finds another strange curve in the clouds and studies it carefully, and after finding yet another set of strange curves three pictures later, she starts to mumble to herself.

"This could be it; the answer I've been looking for. But it's hard to make out. Wait... Wait just a minute."

She goes through a few more pictures until she's on the last one, studies the next set of odd curves on the clouds on that picture and mumbles "it's in the tip of my tongue... the answer is... it's... it's..."

The room flashes and Marisa feels as though a hand grabs her by the neck and slams her forehead against the desk, and then she feels herself fall to the floor with a very disturbing thud, but cannot feel any pain.

As she looks around the now-darkened room she sees the ceiling full of cobwebs, her window is broken and stained with dried blood, she sees old dried guts pulsating on the floor to her left, and then everything flashes again and she finds herself back in her well-lit room, clean of anything other than dust under the bed.

She can feel her consciousness fading softly, and just as everything goes dark, that familiar hissing voice says "(_You have rested well ladies. Shall we continue where we left off? ...ARISE!)_"

* * *

Marisa wakes up from what she feels was a very long dream packed into a two hours nap, however when she looks at the clock hanging over the bedside table she realizes she's only been sleeping for just one; she is still not comforted by that thought.

As she gets up from the ground she shakes her head a bit and calls "Alice!? Alice are you there?"

After a short while, her magician friend calls back "Marisa!? Marisa!" and the witch takes a breath of relief and says to herself "she's fine. I guess it was just a dream."

The blonde witch takes her seat again and goes back to studying the pictures, and mutters to herself "can't go dozing off like that. Now, where was I? I had something just now... What was it?"

"Marisa!? Marisa!"

"Alice, I'm up here. Stop shou-!" Something's wrong. The witch stops studying those pictures and stands up so fast her chair falls down and makes a lot of unnecessary noise.

"A-Alice; are you alright down there?" nervously asks the witch, who waits for just 6 seconds for an answer, but when she gets none her nervousness rises and she loudly yells "godsdamn it Alice, it's not funny! _Say something!_"

"Marisa!? MARISA!" After she calls the witch's name twice again, slow rhythmic thumps echo throughout the house, slowly getting closer to the witch's room in the attic.

Marisa starts to breath fast through her mouth and gets anxious when a rotten smell reaches her, but as anxious as she is she still goes to her bedside table and quickly looks for her Hakkero, then scrambles back to the desk and tries to pick the photos up, but her shaking hands cause her to drop them all to the floor.

She sits on her knees to pick them up and starts to whimper with every breath she takes through her mouth; the thumps keep getting closer and she can hear Alice breathing through her mouth, hissing softly and moaning as though in pain.

The thumps stop, Kirisame's heart slowly settle down and she weakly calls "Alice?" while trying to pick the pictures up again while keeping her eyes on that open floor door leading to the house's first story below.

She looks down as she picks up one of the pictures, a mysterious gust of wind enters her room, chilling everything down to an uncomfortable temperature, then Marisa looks back up, her eyes widen and her mouth drops on its own as the girl's skin turns ghostly pale.

Alice Margatroid stands tall right in front of her. She is not sure when or how, but the girl is right there, and the skin on the left side of her face is slowly peeling off of her muscles as it slowly turns blue, the left side of her dress is stained with so much blood it looks brownish purple, and right in front of Marisa, her left eye pops out, and the puppeteer cries.

"Marisa! Marisa, please, this **hurts so much!** I'm going insane! **_ARGH!_**" She suddenly grabs her head, and the right side of her hair starts falling off as her scalp starts drying up and turning brown.

She screams a bloody scream of agony while her friend keeps calling for her, then cries out loud "**stop this! PLEASE KILL ME! It hurts! MARISAAAAAAA!**"

The blonde puppeteer drops on the floor on her hands and knees and gasps out loud, gurgles as she starts to vomit dark blood, and all Marisa can do is call out to her; but then she stops.

Kirisame stands up with resolve in her eyes, takes her Hakkero on her shaking hand, aims it a point blank on Alice's head, then closes her eyes and shouts "ALICE, FORGIVE ME!"

The buzz from the beam and the cracking of the wooden floor echoes all over the clearing and the surrounding forest, and shortly after, moans, screams, cries of pain and bloody wet noises curse the tranquility of the forest.

Marisa keeps staring at the twitching body of Alice as it slowly turns into a zombie-like state, and she feels like screaming and crying out loud, but the unnerving noises coming from all around her alert her to the danger she is in, so she quickly turns around, finally picks up those pictures, takes her old-looking reddish book from the desk, quickly stuffs them all inside the storage cube after taking it out of her pocket, then she picks up her hat from the bed and summons her broom to her hand, all while breathing hard through her mouth and trying to keep her hands and legs steady as she moves.

As she mounts her broom she looks back at Alice with longing sadness, but then her expression changes when she sees the little blue and silver machine drop out of the puppeteer's pocket, and so she bends down to pick it up and says "I'm so sorry Alice. I don't know exactly what's going on, but I'm going to fix this as fast as I can! I hope you can forgive me when you are well again."

She breaks through her window after taking off into the night, and the first thing she comes in contact with is the cries of pain, incessant moans, screams of agony and the smell of death coming from all over Gensokyo.

She screams when she sees five fairies suddenly dart to the sky while holding their heads and screaming in agony as their skin slowly drips off of their bones and muscles, and before she can kill them to spare them the pain they feel, they drop back down into the trees.

She whimpers as she wonders whether she should go after them to kill them and save them from their agony, but that's when she notices two waterfall-like streams of dark brown clouds flowing to the sky from two different directions, filling everything with a yellowy-brown mist that stinks of decay and death.

She keeps looking around as she tries to get her bearings straight in order to decipher where the clouds are coming from, but she begins to hear aggressive roars and snarls coming from below her, so she loses what little hope of calmness she had left and starts crying with fear.

She closes her eyes, pokes her temples, then all of a sudden she sees images of Satori, Aya and Flandre in front of her, and she loudly thinks "_EIENTEI! EIENTEI!_"

Afterward she takes that silver and blue device out of her apron's hidden pocket, punches the button hard and causes it to beep, and then heads forward toward what she hopes will be the safety of Eientei.

* * *

"_EIENTEI! EIENTEI!_"

Flandre wakes up with a jump-start after an ominous feeling envelops her senses and forces her to abruptly awaken.

As she rubs her eyes she can feel her anxiety rising up from the pit of her stomach and taking over her body, but being the strong vampire that she is, she sighs it off, steps out of her bed, and then walks out her door. What a mistake that was.

"What the-?" The moment she opens her door she is faced with a cracked bloodstained wall lined with bits of flesh, yellow fluids, pieces of innards and organs, and chunks of hair still attached to some bloodied skin.

Her breathing becomes erratic and uncontrollable whimpers escape her lips as she looks around with fright and sees a severed arm full of bites on the floor, and wonders if she should call for someone, thinking that perhaps there's been an accident.

She hears a thump nearby and gasps with fright, then calls her usual fairy maids by their pet names, feeling as though she's about to start screaming with fright. "Flora, Li-Lin, Ari, Hana; I need you!" She hears wings fluttering to her right and looks with happy excitement, but her face drains of any excitement she may have had as she gasps with horror. "ARI! Your neck!"

The black haired fairy in a bloodstained yellow maid's dress flies with difficulty toward her mistress, bleeding profusely from a bite wound on her neck that's staining the whole left side of her dress and making it look dark brown.

She drops on her knees in front of the vampire and holds herself up with her hands as she pants "Mi..sstress... Flan... Must run!"

Flandre picks up the fairy with as much care as she can and softly whimpers "Ari, what happened to you? Who did this to you? Y-your skin; it's turning blue!"

The little fairy chuckles and coughs up some blood, then weakly says "Mistress... Flan... come with me... upstairs. You must... escape!"

The blonde wastes no time and zips her way toward the foyer of the mansion with the fairy held secure against her chest as though she's her child. Her dash is put to an abrupt stop when they come across a multitude of agonizing snarling fairy maids with dried brown skins, sharp teeth and claws, and all emanating a putrid smell that even the vampire can't seem to tolerate.

She holds her nose and is thankful her stomach is empty, and then, while holding her fairy tightly against her chest, she asks "what is this? Ari, what's happening?"

The little fairy pushes herself out of Flandre's grip and falls to the ground where she immediately vomits a disturbing amount of blood, attracting the attention of the undead-looking fairies.

Flandre whimpers for the fairy and reaches for her, but the little creature swipes her hand at her mistress to keep her away and speaks as though strained. "No! Lady Flandre, you must... reach Miss Sakuya! I'll distract them... you go."

As she takes flight with great effort, the vampire snarls and says "no way! You are coming with me! ARI, COME HERE; THAT'S AN ORDER!"

The little fairy turns her face halfway back and shows her mistress her skin is drying up and turning brown, and with a sad smile she says "it's too late for me Lady Flandre. You must save yourself now! GO!"

The zombie fairies roar and immediately go after the vampire, but the little fairy spits her blood straight at the leader of the large pack, then takes off flying back down the basement.

Flandre whimpers with both anger and helplessness as her little fairy sacrifices herself to keep the second young mistress safe, and watches with rage at the undead fairies going after that one lone nature spirit.

She can't take it and swipes her claws at the back of the group, tearing one of the zombies to pieces, but watches with horror as those pieces float back up in the air and arrange themselves up; bones, organs, muscles, then skin; and then the newly formed blonde fairy decays in seconds before her eyes and screams with agony as she dies a second time.

"Flora?" whimpers the blonde vampire as her tears well up under her eyes after witnessing her fairy maid turning into a zombie in an agonizing minute; and now that very same fairy rushes toward her with newly-grown claws the size of her little fingers.

Flandre yelps and covers her face, and by a stroke of luck her left wing crystals ignite and flash the undead fairy in the eyes, forcing her away as she claws her own eyes off, and screeches as though in terrible pain before rushing off toward the basement.

The vampire can hear Ari screaming out loud and starts to cry after taking the decision to finally run out to the foyer as requested, instead of going back and saving the already doomed fairy. She feels her heart breaking as she abandons the maid.

She arrives to the entrance room of the mansion and the first thing she notices is Meiling, the scarlet-haired gate guard with the green Chinese clothes and beret, with a large gash on her chest and a bite mark on her cheek lying on the floor and convulsing lightly.

Next to the gate guard is Sakuya, whose left leg looks purple and has a cut on her right cheek. She sits on her knees and breathes through her mouth as she tries to fight the pain of her wounds.

When she spots Flandre she slowly waves her arm and weakly calls "Young Mistress, over here. Please hurry!"

When the blonde vampire gets closer she realizes the bite mark on Meiling's cheek is surrounded by strands of yellow veins that appear to be slowly taking over her skin, while the chief maid's own wounds don't show signs of any yellow veins, however she appears to be about ready to drop.

"Sakuya-? Sakuya, what happened here? What happened to you; to Meiling!?"

The maid slowly shakes her head, rummages through her pockets, then with her hand still in her right pocket she looks up at the blonde and says "you were right Lady Flandre; we should have listened to you, but now it's too late."

She pulls a triangular device with a blue and silver base similar to Marisa's; its middle button is pulsing at a slow but steady pace; and hands it over to the vampire while saying "please listen to me. Go to that forest with the many bamboos; you remember it? Do you remember that place with the doctor woman?"

The vampire girl looks lost and confused as she accepts the device, then after blinking twice she nods in acknowledgement.

The chief maid sighs with relief and says "good. Flandre, when you reach that place, you should meet with Marisa, Aya and Satori. If they are not there when you arrive you must hide yourself until you see either one of them, do you understand?"

Again, Flandre looks lost and confused and just about ready to cry, but she nods, and then suddenly her face twists as she does cry "Sakuya, what's going on? Why is this happening? I... I don't want to go! Let me stay here! M-maybe I can help-!"

A familiar angry screech stops Flandre's speech, and then she turns around at just the right time to counter a claw swipe from Remilia, who immediately flies up to the next floor's balcony and glares down at her sister.

Her left eye is now a blank orb, her right eye cries blood and something yellow and viscous every time she blinks, her wings appear brittle and dry, the left half of her face is becoming slimy and bony, and the gashes at the side of her torso are a good indication of how she got infected already.

Flandre stammers a bit as she looks up at her sister, afraid of what will happen next, but then she finally manages to sniffle and ask "R-Remi? Sis, i-is that you?"

Remilia's left eye glows, then she suddenly sinks her claws on her right temple and on her own chest, then pulls herself down to the floor where she painfully shouts "F-Fl-lan! Flandre... run! Sakuya... give her... device... Eientei! **GO TO EIENTE-HYAAAAAAAARGH! HURTS!**"

Sakuya finds the strength to push Flandre out of her shock, even though she's just standing on one shaky leg, then shouts "_just go! Please, while you can!_"

She notices the hesitance and worry on Flandre's face as said girl holds the machine against her chest and keeps looking between the maid and her sister, and so she softly says "Lady Flandre, there is nothing you can do now; we are both turning. Please, go to Eientei, follow our instructions! You can come back and save us afterward... **JUST GO!**"

Flandre starts to sob and cry, and even though she can hear moans and roars of monster fairies to her left, she still hesitates; that is until she sees Remilia shedding tears through her left eye while looking down at her sister with great sadness.

The blonde finally nods, sobs softly and cries "I'll be back, I promise! I'll come back for you!" and then she rushes through the front door and takes flight on that darkening summer night sky, where dark clouds and a brown mist slowly envelops the entire land once again.

After making sure Flandre is long gone, and that the front doors are properly sealed after locking them tight, Sakuya smiles and sighs after a job well done, then drops on the floor on her face with a large bite wound on her back that was inflicted by Remilia herself, who stands right behind where the human maid stood; the blood of said maid dripping down her chin.

* * *

At the same time, at Aya's house, the tengu reporter, as usual, rests on her single's couch on the balcony over the entrance to her house. She would usually follow this routine after having taken a bath to gaze outside at the deceitfully beautiful moon, but given the circumstances; after attacking Momiji like she did; she decides to just listen to Hatate's advice and try to relax any way she can.

She now wears her silky white bath robe and a pair of soft white slippers as she slowly relaxes on that couch, feeling as though that anxiety she was feeling just hours before slowly fades away, and then she yelps with fright when she hears Marisa's "_EIENTEI! EIENTEI!_" in her head.

She looks around herself and holds her thumping chest, slowly calms down again after thinking she's just been through another hallucination, and then she sighs as she relaxes yet again and says to herself "this one wasn't so bad."

Her front door opens with a loud bang and closes with an even louder bang just as quickly, causing her to sprout her wings and jump off the couch on to the hard floor.

Before she can even ask who is there, Hatate screams "AYAAAA! WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE, NOW!

The black-haired reporter's heart beats hard enough to hurt her ribs with every loud thump. She rushes down the stairs, but her colleague is already dashing to her room, making her so nervous she's starting to breathe through her mouth.

She runs straight to her room after the brown-haired tengu and anxiously demands "for Suwako's sake Hatate, what the hell is-?" She holds her mouth as she gasps when she sees the horrible bloody gash on the girl's forehead and anxiously yells "_what the hell happened to you!?_"

Hatate hands over the blue and silver device with the pulsating button in the center and says "we head to Eientei, right now! We need to regroup with Satori and Marisa there!"

Aya remains dumbstruck with the device on her hands while her checkered-skirt colleague takes her digital camera, maple fan and a change of clothes, and stuffs them all into that handy storage cube, hands it over, then takes the black-haired girl's hand and pulls while saying "no time, no TIME! Momiji's holding them back, but she can only do so much!"

Just as Aya begins to come into her senses, she is outside the safety and comfort of her house, and is immediately surrounded by the disgusting-smelling brown mist and the sound of hundreds of tengu agonizing as they are either becoming zombies on their own, or being eaten alive by those that have already turned.

She stumbles in place as she looks to the sky and sees how dark-brown clouds begin to cover the seemingly peaceful moon, she starts to hyperventilate when the memories of her past experience come rushing back into the front of her mind, then all of a sudden, before Hatate can even try to comfort her, the girl grabs her own hair and pulls while screaming out loud and letting her tears of despair flow freely down to her chin.

"**NO! Why!? WHY IS THIS HAPPENING AGAIN!? Hatate, please... TELL ME THIS ISN'T _REAL!_**"

Hatate shakes her head softly, and sadly says "I'm so sorry we, like, didn't listen to you and Satori."

Momiji's body makes a loud thud as she yelps when a lance that's going through her body slams hard against the wall of Aya's house, making her smash against it, breaking her tail in the process.

"**_MOMIJI!_**" shrieks Shameimaru as she rushes forth to save her, but her colleague holds her back just as the wolf girl shouts "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE!? Miss Aya, Miss Hatate, **GO!**"

When she turns her face it becomes clear that she has already been bitten on the cheek and neck. "JUST GO!" she cries painfully as the multitude of zombie tengu rush toward the white wolf with great haste.

Aya's breath is robbed when she tries to gasp when she sees the mob; empty eye sockets spilling black ooze and puss, brown shriveled skins tightly stuck to bones, and blood splashing everywhere coming from the zombie tengu running toward her.

Hatate grabs her arm and yells "come on, let's move!" and then she finds herself being dragged around in nothing but her bath robe through a village that's crying out in pain as it slowly becomes an undead-infested hovel once more.

As the realization hits, Shameimaru begins to sob out loud while her friend shouts "no, don't do this! You can't break down now! Listen to me; this won't be like last time! Marisa prepared something, and you and Satori have to meet her at Eientei, but you HAVE TO BE STRONG! ...**_SHAMEIMARU!_**"

Aya hears Momiji scream bloodily and thinks of going back to save her, but the scream dies out quickly and so she's shocked into staring toward Momiji's direction, and then her eyes seem to regain some resolve.

The black-haired girl sniffles and sobs a few more times, starts running along her counterpart, then cries "then let's hurry! This will only get worst i-hif we let it drag on!"

They reach the bridges leading to the gate of the village, but they are met with a most horrific discovery. Not only said bridges are being taken down by decaying crows, the gates themselves are overrun by undead and turning tengu trying to break out of the village.

Upon seeing this, Hatate whispers "no way..." and then she and Aya take flight as though instinctively, but shortly after they do, the zombie crow tengu at the gates and the few undead crows flying around quickly fly up after them.

Aya starts to whimper and appears to be rummaging desperately through her robe's pocket in order to get her camera out of the storage cube.

The brown-haired girl sighs; she knows they won't get out alive if someone doesn't stay to draw the monsters' attention, and so she makes her decision. "Aya, head straight to Eientei; you **MUST** regroup with Satori there!"

The tengu reporter is about to question her friend's words, but as soon as she looks down she is greeted by a tornado Hatate made with a swing from her black feather fan.

Shameimaru screams and complains about wanting to help her friend, while the brown-haired girl smiles at her then flashes her cell phone camera at an oncoming crow, temporarily killing it in an instant, and getting the attention of all the flying zombies there.

Aya cries out for Hatate though she can't hear herself shouting, and watches helplessly as she is pushed out of the village while her friend flies back into the mountain houses, using herself as a distraction so that the black-haired reporter can reach her destination.

As soon as the tornado dies down the tengu girl thinks of going after her comrade, but she knows better and, with a heavy heart she decides to follow her request instead, and after springing her wings out of hiding again she takes off toward the direction of Eientei while looking for her fan and camera inside her storage cube.

* * *

Back at Chireiden, Satori has just returned from a nightly jog around the underground in her cute new workout outfit, and is just about ready to go and take a shower.

Her modern workout outfit consists of tight black leggings with violet bands on the outside and inside of the legs and as the waistband, a seemingly tight black sleeveless shirt with purple straps that is short enough to show off most of her midriff, and a cute lilac headband to keep the sweat off of her eyes.

She's about to reach for that doorknob to her bathroom when she hears "_EIENTEI! EIENTEI!_" in her mind, and gasps with panic, looks around, rolls to her right, then flashes a yellow-head cockatiel and watches it go splat against the door, making a mess of dark blood and bits of skin on it.

"Min-Lei!" she calls as she watches her undead bird convulse on the floor as it slowly loses the feathers on its belly and sees its skin turning brown and dry.

She holds her head and sobs as she kicks away from said bird, then cries "no, no, no, no, this isn't real! An illusion! It's an ILLUSION! Satori, get it together now, PLEASE!"

The door to her room bursts open and Koishi enters with a desperate look in her eyes and the blue and silver device with the pulsating red button on hand, and the moment she sees her sister all the way at the back of the room she rushes to her, grabs her by the arm, then runs back out of the room without saying a single word to the upset and confused mind-reader.

As they go through the hallways that slowly fill with the smelly brown mist, they can hear all the animals in the house screeching, roaring and whining as their bodies slowly and painfully mutate into decaying monstrosities.

Satori cries for her pets and tries to pull herself free of Koishi's hand while shouting "please let me go! They need me! KOISHI PLEASE; WHAT'S HAPPENING!?"

Koishi looks back but never stops running, and explains "onee-chan listen! Marisa was expecting something like this to happen, so she was preparing for it since last month!"

The sisters duck, avoiding a claw-swipe from Orin, whose eyes have both lost their irises, and her skin, though still on her, is turning dark blue. Said cat girl suddenly holds her head and roars as though frustrated and in pain.

The young satori shoots a spark from her third eye at the kasha, runs faster, and then tosses her anxious and depressed older sister forward and turns and shuts the door behind them after exiting the hallway. She then takes her older sister's hand again before said girl goes back, then continues "I don't know all the details, but she said that if she pressed the button, that you, Aya and Flandre should head straight to Eientei to meet with her there!"

The girls tackle the entrance doors to the palace, then the younger sister takes flight; taking her older sister with her by force; and says "Satori, please don't struggle! I'm sorry I didn't listen to you before, but you have to listen to _me_ now!" She hands Satori the device and desperately yells "go to Eientei and regroup with Aya!"

The purple-haired girl looks into her sister's eyes, her tears dry up as she accepts the device and starts feeling resolve, then hesitantly says "a-alright, let's go then."

Both she and Koishi gasp when they look toward the city. The entire area is completely polluted with a thick mass of brown mist that smells like the scent of a hundred rotting youkai corpses, and they must go through it, or they will never reach the underground's exit.

The Komeiji sisters speak no words and merely take a deep breath before going into the mist, but to their surprise that thick mist is merely surrounding the Ancient City, while only a light mist creeps through the streets.

As the girls continue their flight above the buildings, they can hear the spirits, youkai and oni screaming, screeching, moaning and crying with despair as they are painfully mutated.

Satori's mind suddenly takes her back to the time she and Aya had to jump over buildings to avoid the zombie oni and had to gaze upon a disgusting sack filled with organs that was dripping their contents into a giant glass bottle for possible consumption.

She stops thinking to avoid returning her meal, and then she looks to Koishi to speak to her, but that's when she notices something strange.

Koishi coughs softly, and upon doing so she spits out a lot of blood, and her skin becomes a little paler. She looks down at Satori with a pained smile on bloodied lips, nods, then shows her a small cut on her shoulder and says "I got this earlier today. I'm going to turn soon... sis."

Satori gasps, her tears well up under her eyes again, and all she manages is a whimpered "Koishi" before Yuugi; whose skin is turning dark purple and her left eye is swollen and pumping dark-yellowish-green puss; jumps over to them and tries to claw them both, but they are saved when the younger sister swirls over the oni and kicks her down to the ground while the older sister yelps with fright.

As she speeds up her flight, the girl chuckles, sniffles, and says "to think that last time I didn't turn so quickly, and this time a stupid cut makes me sick as soon as everything starts." She sobs out loud and cries "I'm sorry I can't be of help to you! I'm so sorry that I am going to be a danger to you again! I am _so sorry_ I didn't listen to you! I'm only trouble for you, sister!"

The purple-haired satori frowns, speeds up to catch up to her sobbing little sister, and then gives her a hug, then softly says "it's not your fault! It never was." She sighs after placing her sister's head on her chest, and with a cracking voice she adds "I'll get you back to normal again, I swear!"

Koishi gasps, grabs Satori by the neck, tosses her away, and all the older Komeiji can do for the moment is watch as her young sister screams with pain when that zombie oni jumps back up and thrusts a speared clawed hand through her little sister's back, getting smeared with her blood.

Satori screams, though she can barely hear herself doing so, as all her focus is on speeding back to Koishi's side and flashing the mutating oni in the eyes, then taking her little sister in her arms like a princess, and flying straight up the hole to the upper caves.

The purple-haired girl continues whimpering her sister's name over and over and repeating how everything is going to be alright, while the grey-green-haired girl spasms, whimpers and sobs as the pain curses her entire being.

"Hold on Koishi-chan, we're almost out!" exclaims the older Komeiji with her cracking voice as soon as the exit comes to view, but she stops abruptly and furiously cries "no, no, **NO!** Why now!?"

Yamame, Kogasa and Kisume have all turned by now, and they already have a couple of mutated spirits on their side, although they all still look as though are still painfully mutating. They all have dry-looking but slimy grey skin, their eyes are mere orbs of darkening white, and all have several bite marks on their faces and ribs.

Satori can see the bodies of the zombie fairies that bit the girls, but that gives her no comfort since now she has three strong-looking undead youkai zombies and mutated spirits moaning as they block the exit and fly toward her and her little sister.

She readies a heavy charge of light beams in front of her armored third eye, but Koishi pushes herself off of the comfort of her older sister's hands, and falls on the unforgiving sharp rocks under them, spreading some of her own blood on the rocks.

Before the mind-reader picks her sister back up, said girl stands up as her skin turns brownish-blue and shouts "go! I will keep them distracted!"

When Satori fails to move the young Komeiji snarls and shouts "**FUCKING GO ALREADY, YOU STUPID BITCH! I am already turning so at least let me help you with this! GOOOO!**"

Hearing such harsh words from her own sister hurts her heart a great deal, but she can understand that there is truth and worry in them, and so she takes off to the entrance of the cave.

Kisume is just about to lunge herself toward a fresh meal, but Koishi uses the blood from her back-through-stomach wound to distract the bucket mutant, snarls with every breath, and as her left eye pops she screams "**come on you disgusting bitches! Come and TRY to take me on!**" She starts to laugh manically and shortly after the sound of breaking bones, ripping flesh and splashing blood echoes throughout the cave and its surroundings.

It is obvious, by the sound of the maniacal laughter from the young Komeiji that the little sister has won that battle, but the purple-haired girl hears as those laughs slowly become cries of pain, then screams of agony.

She turns around, thinking of killing her sister so she doesn't have to suffer the pain of the transformation, but watches in horror at the silhouette of her little sister as she grabs her own head, cries "**THE PAIN! MAKE THE PAIN STOP RIGHT NOOOOW!**" and swiftly snaps her own neck, ending her pain and causing her older sister's heart even more pain.

* * *

Eientei; the large Japanese mansion settled at the Bamboo Forest of the lost, has a wall surrounding its large grounds, although all the bamboo surrounding the wall as well makes it seem useless.

To the right side of the grounds is a seemingly small building that is the clinic and laboratory of Eirin Yagokoro, the servant of Kaguya Houraisan, further back and to the left are the storage house and the supply cabin that's been made specially to hold Eirin's many drugs, and taking up almost all the rest of the space is the mansion itself.

The immediate area surrounding said mansion has a thick concentration of that brown mist that is causing the bamboo to slowly mutate into something brittle but strong, dark and ominous, and many creatures can be heard screeching and roaring in pain as they start to mutate, or are being eaten alive, torn to pieces or painfully killed by thorny black bamboo shoots that suddenly rise from the ground.

The mansion and its grounds, however, show no sign of change, and instead appear to have the sun right in top of the area, even though it's barely past midnight.

Aya takes mental notes and pictures as she approaches the large sunlit mansion, and wonders what kind of screwy spell causes the sun to be out in one spot when the moon is so high up for everywhere else.

She ignores this confusion and thinks getting in there will make her anxiety lessen, and so she rushes toward the seemingly safe mansion.

Just as she's about to enter the sunny grounds she hears a girl crying nearby and stops. As soon as she looks around she hears a yelp and sees a blur getting behind some dark bamboo shoots.

Whoever it is, she's still crying quite loudly, so she's bound to be found out and eaten, or worse, so the tengu decides to try a sweet approach. "Excuse me, hi. Um, my name is Aya; I'm a friend."

The little girl in hiding squeaks then sobs before speaking with a cracked voice "M-M-Miss Aya? D-don't hurt me, please. I swear I am not the one doing this!"

"Flandre!?" exclaims the surprised tengu before slowly flying around the bamboo shoots, and there she is, the blonde vampire crying like a lost child with her wrists on her eyes and her tears staining her face and hands, sitting on the dark ground with her back against the bamboo.

Aya flies closer to the girl, but stops when said girl yelps with fright, then sighs and says "it's alright; I am not going to hurt you, I just want to help, but I want you to be very honest with me..."

Flandre sniffles and looks up with glistening sad eyes at the intimidating figure with wings before her, then the tengu girl asks "have you been bitten, scratched, or are you feeling pain of any kind."

The little blonde sobs out loud and nods, then puts her fist on her chest and cries "my chest; it hurts! I'm so scared it hurts."

Shameimaru raises her camera and her eyes take an ominous look; her own anxiety rises as she decides to risk herself to get closer while saying "your chest you say, huh? So you've been infected? You got into another fight with your sister and she infected you, didn't she?"

The vampire's lips suddenly frown so much she makes her face look swollen, and the moment her eyes well up with tears she bawls while crying "NOOO! It's not thaaat! Onee-chan! Sister! Sakuya and Meiling, and ...fairies!"

Between her bawls and sobs the girl is unable to speak anymore, however the reporter remembers that once you are bitten or scratched, you start showing symptoms immediately, and this girl before her is acting quite normal, and so she takes the risk and tugs on her shirt to look down into it. No marks.

Aya's own anxiety suddenly leaves with a loud sigh of relief after seeing the girl is fine, but she's quickly yelping and stammering when that little girl suddenly jumps on her and holds her in an embrace while crying her eyes out on her almost-open bath robe.

"Sakuya! She was hurt... and I couldn't help... and my fairy maids are dead! And Remi was crazy, and Sakuya told me... I came here; but that sun! I can't go in there! I'll die! It's too bright! Please, don't let me die! I'm scared!"

The crow tengu manages to calm herself down after achieving steady hovering, then she pulls her left arm free from the embrace and pats the blonde's head while softly saying "there, there, calm down, I won't leave you here."

Those red eyes from the vampire are already on her as she smiles and asks "um, could you let me go now? I can't help you if I'm trapped like this."

Flandre silently nods, slowly drops back down to the ground, followed by Aya who lands right in front of the trembling and sniffling blonde, then the tengu looks inside her storage cube and pulls a very familiar pink parasol.

She offers it to the young vampire and says "your sister gave me this as a gift. Here, you use it so you don't die, alright."

The young Scarlet quickly accept the pink parasol and opens it up, then smiles with teary eyes at the tengu, surprised for the kind gesture. She still remembers the horrible beating she got from that very same woman and her spirits, and she never would have guessed that very same girl is now saving her life.

That very same tengu offers her hand to the sniffling blonde; who takes it without question while staring into the reporter's eyes; and then said crow girl says "come on, let's go in. Satori might be in there already."

The girls take flight and head straight toward the illuminated grounds; and just in time too. Unknown to them, they had been completely surrounded by rabbits with pitch black, messy hair that twitch every second.

Those rabbits watch with glowing red eyes as their prey enter the safety of sunlight, and foam at the mouth with purple drool as their frustration escalates.

* * *

The vampire and the tengu land right in front of the mansion's gates, unaware that they are being watched by something from within the mansion itself, and once they feel safe and their bodies begin to relax, the blonde tugs on the crow girl's robes and bashfully says "um, th-thank you for h-helping me. Please don't tell anyone about my crying. Sister would get so angry at me if she found out."

Aya pats the girl's head and back, but before she can speak up; "**HEEEEEEELP!**" That familiar voice raises the robed girl's alarm; she looks at Flandre and says "stay here!" then takes off toward the tainted land once more while shouting "Satori, I'm coming!"

Satori looks exhausted as she flaps her arms and kicks her legs in mid air to boost herself forward, while a multitude of zombie fairies is hot on her trail.

Snarling and spitting puss, swinging their little, but sharp claws around, all of them may still look like fairies, but their darkened jagged teeth and missing irises; and the few that have blood all over them; are a good indication of their recent mutation.

"Aya," she sighs as she lets herself drop on the capable tengu's arms, and then said girl shoots a flash at the fairies, and shouts "hold on!"

The exhausted satori youkai gladly sinks her face on her partner's almost-exposed chest while said girl flaps her exposed wings and takes off like a bullet back to the safety of Eientei, but she yelps and stops while automatically flashing a couple of fairies that seemingly materialize in front of them.

The poor girl trying to catch her breath manages to say "moving... fast... Shoot... eyes!" and the reporter immediately aims her digital camera forward and flashes the fairies twice.

The zombies screech and rub their eyes, but they don't fall, so Aya shoots them with two more flashes and takes off while they grumble and rub their faces again.

She starts to hyperventilate after the speedy fairies catch up again and refuse to fall after the fifth flash, then shouts "what is **up** with these zombies!?"

Two scarlet orbs fly past Aya and Satori and strike the first two speedy fairies on the face, giving the fast flyer the chance she needs to enter the invisible dome of safety with her partner, and as soon as they are safely inside, Flandre gasps and lowers her shooting arm while blinking.

Aya and Satori are gasping on the ground while recovering, then the tengu lifts her face to look at the vampire and smiles while saying between breaths "th-thank you... very much! Hah! I owe you one!"

She then notices the blonde's shocked face and looks back, then gasps softly and looks just as surprised while asking herself "what in the world?"

The zombie fairies are nowhere to be seen. It is as if they were never there to begin with, but the girls are sure they weren't illusions; they could smell the decay coming from them, something the illusions lacked.

Before she can even form a question about the fairies in her mind, Aya finds herself being tackled to the ground with a hug from the now crying Komeiji. "Aya! Aya, my sister! My sister; Koishi!"

Between sobs and hics she says "I tried to save her! She saved me, but I couldn't... and now she's... my poor sister! My poor dear sister! Aya, my poor Koishi!"

The tengu girl begins to cry as soon as her memory about Hatate and Momiji's sacrifice returns to her, and after giving a kiss on her partner's purple hair, with a cracking voice the crow girl says "I know my dear, I know. Hatate and Momiji... they did the same."

"Why?" cries Satori between desperate sobs. "Why is this... again? Why again? We-it's not fair! Again... not again!"

The proud tengu can't take anymore and suddenly breaks down to cry along with Satori, while Flandre cries silently on her own as soon as she remember the sacrifice made by her own family and her maids for her safety, and she drops on her knees next to the other two girls.

Aya reaches for the blonde and holds her close, and all three of them cry out their stress and frustration. Satori enjoys occasional kisses on the head, while Flandre gets rubs on the back of her head and neck that makes her remember Remilia's own sisterly hugs.

Some minutes later the girls finally disperse as they recover themselves. They all remain sitting on the ground while they look at each other and try to smile to offer some form of support.

Finally, Satori sniffles, sighs and says "so here we are, surrounded by undead monsters that want to eat us again."

Aya shakes her head while sighing and says "not only that, but it looks like they are stronger too... and it hasn't even been a day. But..."

Flandre bundles herself under the shade of her parasol and asks "I thought the full mutations took up to three days, and yet there are so many already!"

"That's exactly what's both-!" Shameimaru's mouth locks up in an open position when she finally takes a really good look at Satori, who sits on her side with her right leg bending over her left one while wearing that alluring outfit.

"Tight round buttocks?" begins the tengu with a slight stammer in her speech. "E-exposed midriff; cute exposed arms; tight, totally revealing workout outfit! Satori-chan, why haven't you worn this before, when **we** were together at your house?"

The mind-reader's face turns bright red and she covers her mouth with both hands while gasping loud and long, and then exclaims "Ay-AYA-CHAN, no, that's not proper! Please stop thinking that!"

The crow girl keeps staring with her mouth agape with drool slowly dribbling out of the corner of her mouth, but it's not until Flandre lightly smacks the back of her head that she finally realizes how uncomfortable her dear friend is, and so looks away with a shamed frown and says "um... th-thanks Flandre. Er, y-you look, um, really good Satori-chan."

The mind-reader sighs and calms herself, then smiles sweetly even though she's still blushing and sweetly says "well, you certainly look good in your bath robe. Maybe you should bring that with you the next time you come sleep over."

The vampire furiously stomps on the ground to get the lover-girls' attention. Her body shivers as her face reddens with fury and says "listen you two, in case you have forgotten, we are SURROUNDED BY UNDEAD THINGS!"

She sobs cutely and whimpers with an angry frown "we have to fix this now! I want my family and servants back!"

The two girls stare at the shivering sniffling blonde for a while, and then Komeiji bows her head and shamefully says "please excuse my behavior. I am usually more composed."

Aya sighs and lets her head hang while she says "right, right, priorities. I'm sorry."

She and her satori friend lift their heads to the dark sky outside their safe dome, and then the latter youkai says "we still need to wait for Miss Marisa. She's the one with the solution to this."

"Yeah," suddenly exclaims Flandre. She looks around her immediate area and the sky around them and asks "but where is Marisa? She should be here by now."

"And she is. She's been waitin' for ya for some time now!"

All three girls exclaims the witch's name as they look toward the mansion and see the black and white magician standing there after the gate with her hands crossed over her chest and an annoying grin on her face.

* * *

Aya rushes up on her feet and dashes toward Marisa, grips her neck, and while straining herself so she doesn't strangle the weak human, she speaks through her teeth. "**You!** You didn't try making another shitty immortality potion, did you!?"

The witch can feel how the oxygen fails to reach her lungs, yet she tries to speak through grunts. "N-no... learned... my lesson. Didn't... do this!"

"She's right." As soon as she hears Eirin's voice, Aya drops Marisa and looks toward the Lunarian doctor. "Eirin! So she really IS trying to help?"

The Lunarian woman has long silver hair she ties into a large braid, has dull dark grey eyes, and wears a dress with red and blue on either side of the skirt and shirt, matching the nurse hat on her head, and all have constellations adorning each colored square.

Satori stands besides her partner and stares casually at the witch while saying "yes, she is, and she had almost discovered the source of our illusions, but something got in her way."

The witch holds her neck as she stands back up and says "yes, I almost had it. There was something in the clouds in the pictures of your past fights; however I can't remember what I found, or what significance it had."

Flandre stomps her foot again and gets everyone's attention, points outside their safe spot, and shouts "please, there's an incident going on out there! If you can fix it, then let's fix it _now!_"

She drops on her knees and holds her face as she remember her past; how she tortured humans, other youkai, and many fairies to their deaths, and how she enjoyed doing as such while splashing their blood all over herself.

At the same time she remembers what just happened to her at the mansion and sobs. "The fairy maids, Remilia-sis, Sakuya, Meiling; they were hurt, Ari screamed when the other fairies got her! She was so hurt and she saved me. Remilia hurt herself to save me! I can't... It's...it's all my fault!"

Satori kneels closer to the girl and whispers "Miss Flandre, you are living in the present. Don't let the past rule you. Yes, you made mistakes, but you have to learn from them so you can move forward; so let the past go."

Eirin steps up and kneels besides the sobbing blonde, quickly injects her with a transparent-blue liquid, and says "that is correct young lady. What has happened, happened. Focus on now so you can save your loved ones."

She notices the worried look the teary-eyed vampire is giving her, so she smiles and says "it's alright, it's just a little something to help you relax." The alien stand up afterward and says "right, Marisa, tell me again how are we going to do this!"

"Right," exclaims the witch with a nod. "Well, Kaguya has been using her powers to keep this place secure at an earlier time of the day, that's why the mist can't enter and why it looks like it's daytime over here, while outside it' midnight."

Aya and Satori look around as they head toward the mansion's doors, while Marisa continues "all we gotta do is very simple now. We have to get to Kaguya, link our energies with hers, and she can spread her ability and cover the entire land long enough to negate the mutating mists with sunlight, and restore our friends and families to their usual, sweet selves."

Eirin smiles as she opens the door to the mansion's living room, and Aya and Satori, having had experiences of this kind before, notice that everything seems too dark, even though there is a bit of light entering the room that's illuminating the short table in the middle.

Everything seems alright; there are no signs of fights or deaths, and yet something feels wrong to the girls.

The tengu looks to her mind-reading friend and thinks "_is it just me, or does something feel kind of... off about this place?_"

The mind-reader nods once, but she gestures her dear girl to settle down, however Aya, being who she is, decides to ask "say Eirin; what happened to Udonge and Tewi. Where are they?"

With her sweet smile on she says "oh, they are making sure none of the rabbits were infected. In their last report they told me they had to kill and throw out at least 50 rabbits. So far, everything else seems just fine."

Satisfied with the answer; Shameimaru chuckles while thinking "_I guess it's nothing then. Perhaps the light of that eternal sun just doesn't reach inside buildings._"

Satori nods to this, but continues looking around suspiciously, and then realizes Flandre has been very quiet while they make their way inside.

The darkened kitchen to the right of the girls appears clean and neat, and the corridor to their left, though appearing ominous, remain peacefully quiet, and the living room itself has a new red mat under its table and is looking cleaner than ever.

Marisa, being human, is having a very hard time seeing all the details, but she's more focused on reaching the garden by going through the next sliding door after the table before them.

Satori, however, walks near the silent vampire and asks "is everything alright young one?"

Flandre looks up at her with empty eyes, nods, and weakly says "it's that thing she put in me. It's making me feel funny."

The mind reader looks to the Lunarian and ask "Miss Eirin, I think you gave too much of that medicine to the vampi...re?"

Eirin turns around with a smile just as her hand touches the door to the backyard, when Satori suddenly gasps and opens her mouth to shout, but the floor beneath them bursts with such a loud bang, the human amongst them can only hear ringing in her ears after slamming against the wall and falling on her face.

The blonde vampire has been knocked out, courtesy of the effect of Eirin's drug, and only Aya and Satori can hear as the pharmacist shouts "Udonge, help me get them to safety, hurry!"

They hear when another girl yells "alright! I'll take the vampire girl!" then they both slowly stand back up, rubbing their aching heads and wondering what's going on.

They quickly realize that they are now surrounded by countless twitching black fur balls with glowing red eyes, rabbit ears, and yellow jagged teeth.

Satori wastes no time and begins flashing the odd little rabbits, making them screech so loud their piercing screams shatter anything made of glass near them.

Aya quickly reaches for her camera and starts taking shots to clear a path to Eirin and Reisen, whom are already outside and calling out to them to get outside.

The tengu grabs her partner by the waist while said girl flashes several rabbits away from them, then jumps outside after flashing forward once more, avoiding a bite to the back of her now bare foot.

She and Satori are now safe outside in the light, where the monstrous rabbits obviously cannot follow.

Reisen, who has long light-purple hair, red eyes, and wears a torn white shirt, a short pink skirt, and a purple bra, sighs with relief as she holds the parasol over the unconscious vampire and says "you made it!"

She bows to Eirin and exclaims "I'm so sorry Master! Tewi, she was infected and tricked me into thinking she was not! She almost got me, but I managed to escape, but it's only a matter of time before she reaches the Princess!"

Satori, after recovering her breath, looks to Eirin with a challenging stare and is about to say something, but the sky suddenly turns dark, and the ground immediately begins to rumble.

Shortly after, holes begin to appear with a bang, so the girls all scream and run toward the clinic, which is as dark as the mind-reader remembers it from the last time.

Eirin closes the door behind them; the ground start shaking violently, Reisen grabs Marisa and Flandre and runs to the back, anxiously shouting "**hurry, the panic room! To the panic room!**"

The girls feel when Eirin grabs hold of them both, but with such abnormal strength that they think she's going to squeeze them in half.

They feel as if the world turns upside down and can see pieces of wood and bamboo used to build the clinic flying all around them; they can feel the impact when they fall to the ground, but before they can get their bearings they are caught again, pulled toward the darkness, then get tossed into a metal room where they hear a door shutting close, and before they know it they start hearing some light hissing.

The tengu and mind-reader slowly stand up, rubbing their heads while they hear Marisa moaning to their lefts and asking "what the hell happened, ze?"

Satori finally recovers enough to see they are inside a large metal room that has a working refrigerator to their rights, a pair of sleeping bags and a rolled futon in the middle of the room, canned supplies on cabinets hung to both sides of said room, and a single wide light rod that illuminates the entire room on its own as it hangs from thick strings that are attached to the ceiling.

"Aya-chan" calls the mind-reader, and to her relief she gets a conscious groan from the tengu as a response, then exclaims "Aya-chan, Marisa, we've been deceived! Eirin has already been turned!"

"**WHAT!?**" exclaims the witch with fright in her eyes, and continues "bu-bu-but that's impossible! She showed no signs of mutations, had no bites, nothing! Girls, I just spent a whole half-hour with her alone! I'm sure I... would have noticed? Wait a minute. He eyes looked dull, didn't they?"

As Marisa elaborates on her own thoughts, the tengu girl grabs Satori by her bare shoulders and looks into her eyes while saying "but if that is true... you don't think she..." She looks at Flandre and gulps, and continues "...that she did something to Flandre, right?"

Satori looks down sadly and shakes her head, then she suddenly looks up when she notices the hissing sound, and asks "hey, what's that noise?"

Aya and Marisa look all around the room, then the witch suddenly gasps and shouts "it's gas! She's going to gas us! Quick, get that door open!"

The three girls rush to the door and grunt as they try to pull it, then push it, then try to pull it from a small latch between the door and the archway, then the witch cries "hurry uup! It's starting to cover the whole-"

She stumbles left, then right, and then she falls on her back next to Flandre and closes her eyes.

The tengu and mind-reader panic and scramble their hands around the door, hoping to find a way to open it, but they suddenly succumb to the gas, moan as they stumble around each other, and shortly after Satori falls on her back, and then Aya falls on top of the purple-haired girl. Everything becomes dark, and every one of their senses shut down.

* * *

To be continued...

Characters, spell cards and scenarios belong to ZUN -Tame Shanghai Alice-

APR 15 2014

Written by

Willie G.R.

* * *

**A/N:**

**And so, I finally begin the second journey of the Undying Gensokyo series. Mind you, I do so with a bit of worry, as I want to make it as good as the first one, and (to me, at least) this first chapter may not feel like the first chapter of UG, but it gives a sense of heartache, despair and tension (at the end). Well, I'll give it a chance, seeing as this is the first chapter, and it was solely used for introductions. Please wish me luck as I, once again, take Aya and Satori into an unfair quest; but hey, at least they have company...**

**Also, notice that I already rated this one M from the get-go. I'm going to TRY and be more descriptive about certain gory scenes. I know they can't read this, but I apologize to those that can't read this because of the rating. Anyways, onward to the future!**


End file.
